


Babies Love Clowns

by crocodileinterior



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Babies, Babysitting, Fluff and Humor, Really only LexJokes if you squint sorry, Reference to character deaths that occured in comic canon, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24710677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crocodileinterior/pseuds/crocodileinterior
Summary: The Joker becomes an unexpected babysitter for Conner Kent.
Relationships: Joker (DCU) & Lex Luthor, Joker (DCU)/Lex Luthor, Kon-El | Conner Kent & Joker (DCU), Kon-El | Conner Kent & Lex Luthor
Comments: 13
Kudos: 74





	Babies Love Clowns

**Author's Note:**

> The ending makes reference to the Infinite Crisis comic and might make less sense unless you’ve read it. Also, optional soundtrack- Baby Love Child by Pizzicato Five.

The Joker stood in the center of Lexcorp’s penthouse office with both hands up in the air above his head. Across from him, Luthor had both hands occupied- one was pointing a high-tech gun at the center of Joker’s chest, but in the other arm, nestled in the crook of his elbow and swaddled in a fuzzy blue blanket, was a baby.

“Don’t come any closer.” Lex warned. “This plasma gun will melt the flesh off your bones if you so much as try and harm a hair on my son’s head.”

The Joker slapped his hands to the side of his own face, his mouth dropping, in melodramatic shock and offense at the accusation. “Lexie! HARM him?! I would never! And he has hairs on his head to harm? You sure he’s yours?”

Lex ignored the quip and narrowed his eyes at him. “I’ve already had to dispose of two attempted kidnappers this week, don’t think I’ll hesitate to get rid of a third.”

The baby in his arms agreed with a happy noise and began chewing on the edge of Lex’s Armani necktie.

Joker’s red lips formed an upside down U of displeasure and his eyes bulged, glassy and wet. “KIDNAPPING?! Now you’re just hurting my feelings! What kind of low rate miscreant do you take me for?”

Lex raised an eyebrow at him. “Then what are you here for?”

“Be~cause…” the Joker brought his hands to his face once more, biting his fists and unable to contain his glee, “…I LOVE babies!”

Lex looked unconvinced. “You’re a psychopathic, serial killing, clown.”

“A psychopathic serial killing clown who LOVES babies!”

The Joker leaned forward as much as he could without taking another step, his body going at an impossible 45 degree angle from the floor to crane his neck toward the bundle of blankets and get a closer look.

Bright eyes blinked up at the Joker curiously in a round, rosy cheeked, face, topped with a tuft of dark, curly, hair. The baby let the now slobber coated end of Lex’s tie fall out of his mouth.

Joker practically squealed with joy. “He’s so cuuuute! And itsy bitsy! Did the stork deliver him or is he a test tube baby?”

“I made him in the lab,” Lex sniffed haughtily. “We called him project Kon.”

“Mmm,” Joker sighed dreamily. “Straight from the centrifuge and into your heart.”

“He’s half mine, half…” Lex hesitated. “…Kryptonian.”

Joker nodded, seemingly unsurprised by this. “That little curl of hair is all super-daddy, but he has your eyes…”

Lex frowned, noticing how close the Joker had managed to inch toward them. “And YOU’LL have my FOOT in your ass if you don’t back up a few feet.” He snapped, brandishing the ray gun once more.

Joker gasped. “Cover your ears, baby! Daddy has a potty mouth! How incorrigible!”

Lex pressed the gun to the center of Joker’s forehead. “Back. Off.”

Joker frowned, gave him a sidelong glance. “Motherhood has made you so cranky.” he remarked dryly.

Perhaps sensing the tension in the room, the baby boy’s lips began to tremble. Then his face scrunched up, as threatening as dark storm clouds, before erupting into wails and tears.

Lex groaned, nearly as loud as the baby’s cries, and stopped aiming his gun at the Joker to lift it to his own forehead and use the handle to rub circles against his temple in frustration. “THIS again…” he muttered.

“Whew, that’s quite the lung capacity.” Joker remarked, plugging one of his ears with a finger. “Mind you, I’d be crying too if I knew male pattern baldness was in my genetic future.”

Lex shot him a deathly glare and then ignored him in favor of tending to the screaming child. With a long suffering sigh he started trying to gently bounce the squirming bundle of blankets in his arms and make little shh-ing and kissy noises at him to soothe him. It was fascinating to see- Lex Luthor the ruthless business tyrant bend to anyone’s demands so easily or allow himself to look as undignified as he did in that moment.

“Shh, come now, we talked about this- daddy has to work. No more crying.” he pleaded in an urgent, stage-whispered voice. This only seemed to make the baby shriek louder, mouth wide open and fat tears rolling down his face. Lex emitted a nearly pathetic moan in frustration to accompany it and frantically began shh-ing agin and rocking the infant in his arms.

Before Lex could shoot him for it, Joker hopped up right next to the baby. “C’mon, kiddo! Look at Uncle Jokey!” And blew a wet raspberry and crossed his eyes.

The baby’s cries halted and he stared at Joker, at first just perplexed, and then, as easily as the tears had come, burst into gurgling laughter. Joker continued his act by sticking his tongue out and rolling his eyes around in his head and making funny noises. The baby in Lex’s arms went into hysterics at this, clapping his chubby hands together and wiggling in mirth.

“See?” Joker said smugly. “At least someone here thinks I’m funny.”

The baby cocked his head to one side, looking at Joker with wide, saucer, eyes and reached out a pudgy hand to pinch the tip of the Joker’s nose.

“See, Lex? Babies love clowns!” Joker chirped, delighted. 

“Well that shows disappointingly poor judgement on his part.” Lex grumbled.

“Don’t worry, Lexy! I don’t care that you had a baby with another man! I’ll raise him as my own!” Joker crowed, throwing his arms out theatrically.

“I’m putting him back in his crib.” Lex said, walking over to a rather modern looking, half-egg shaped, apparatus stuffed with blankets and soft toy animals. Hung over it was a mobile that in addition to dangling little birds, stars, and moons, also seemed to have sensors of some sort attached to it.

“The crib is equipped with a full alarm system, a self defense protocol, and within a six foot radius around it, detects metals, toxic pathogens, fast movements, and incinerates potential threats with laser technology.” Lex explained.

“But does it have a setting for baked potatoes?”

“You’ll want to empty your pockets of anything dangerous before going near it.”

Joker’s eyebrows worried together and he assumed an expression of mock innocence. “My pockets? But I don’t have anything scary in my pockets! Well, unless this gun counts.”

He pulled a pistol out of his pocket and with a swing of his wrist dropped it on the floor.

“Or these poison darts.” He added, taking a handful of darts and dropping them in the same place as the gun.

“OR this rubber ducky grenade. Or this switch blade. Or this flower that shoots acid. Or these razor playing cards. Or this exploding cigar-”

Joker continued with his list until he’d formed a comically large pile of dangerous weaponry and items on the floor next to him.

Lex pinched the space between his eyebrows. “….How did you even have room for all that in your pockets…?”

Then waved his hand dismissively when Joker opened his mouth to answer. “Nevermind. I really don’t want to know.”

Lex lowered the little bundle into the crib and Joker practically skipped over to kneel beside it. The crib didn’t turn him to dust, so Lex figured he was probably safe for the moment.

“I… Have to do some work. But don’t try anything.” Lex warned, looking over his shoulder fretfully even as he walked back over to his desk a few feet away. But Joker was completely enraptured with the baby, cooing at him and making funny faces.

“I’m going to get you so many toys. Really loud ones. Your daddy’s gonna HATE it!” Joker snickered, brimming with excitement.

Lex let the two of them play, busying himself with his work, reading and signing off on the stack of paperwork his secretary had left for him that morning.

Joker hummed, voice saccharine, from by the crib. “Lookit the little guy… Not a care in the world! He has no idea his father is an evil overlord.”

“Which one?” Lex deadpanned from behind his desk.

Lex made a few phone calls, typed away at his computer, every few seconds sliding his gaze surreptitiously over to the crib but Joker was never doing anything worthy of suspicion.

Joker had a plush bunny in hand and was dancing it across the edge of the crib while Kon reached for it with tiny, plump, fingers and giggled.

Lex told himself he would refuse to find the picture before him endearing. But even he couldn’t suppress a smile when Kon started grabbing at the dangling curl of Joker’s green hair and trying to put it in his mouth.

After over an hour, Lex had taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, was stretching his arms over his head after signing off in his last contract of the day. The sun was beginning to set, the giant glass wall of the office showing a skyline full of soft oranges and pinks. Lex wandered over to the crib, loosening his tie. Joker looked up as Lex appeared behind him.

“He’s asleep,” Joker whispered.

The baby’s eyes were closed, long dark lashes shadows on round little cheeks. He was snuggled up against a stuffed animal, a bit of drool escaping the corner of his mouth.

“Can I come visit the little guy again?” Joker asked, still pitching his voice low and quiet so as not to wake the sleeping child.

Lex sighed. Thought about it. And against his better judgement said “…Sure.”

Joker’s eyes immediately lit up with pure joy. Shining in a way that under normal circumstances Lex would’ve found frightening. Well, it was still a little frightening.

“Next time I want to change a diaper!” Joker said, his teeth practically gnashing together with a manic excitement as he said it.

“You… WANT to change diapers?” Lex scoffed incredulously.

“Well I never have before. But bathroom humor- always a crowd pleaser.”

The baby stirred a little, making little noises in his sleep and kicking his legs out gently. Joker reached in and adjusted his blanket and he settled, serene and smiling once more.

“He’s really great….” Joker crooned, voice full of affection, and maybe even a touch of unexpected wistfulness. “Hey, Lex?”

“Hmm?”

“Let’s have another one.”

Lex rolled his eyes.

\- - -

Over the next few days, Lex’s office was bombarded with deliveries of clown toys, clown plushies, honking blinking remote controlled clown cars… There were so many gifted toys there was barely enough room in the crib for the baby itself. All presumably stolen in armed robberies and all delivered in person, of course, and accompanied by gushing over how cute the baby was, tickling sessions and lullabies sung loudly and off key.

The clone’s growth was accelerated so within only a few weeks Kon-el was not so tiny anymore and already toddling around on chubby legs, gurgling out half formed words, and throwing his toys around with super-force that dented the walls. Lex did his best to impart some early education onto the boy by playing mozart and reading him aloud passages from Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura and Virgil’s Aeneid. All of his child sized outfits were of only the highest quality, including a stylish Givenchy hoodie and a pair of one-of-a-kind bespoke sneakers by Balenciaga.

Joker announced that toddlers were possibly even better than babies- for virtue of their sheer ability to create chaos on a larger scale than a helpless newborn could. After all, Joker shared many of the same interests as toddlers- finger painting, funny noises, breaking things, hide and seek… And together they teamed up to make a complete mess out of Lex’s office.

\- - -

Though it had only been a mere few years since he’d been in a crib, the clone teen who now called himself Superboy was already grown up, broad shouldered and almost as muscular as his Kryptonian DNA donor, and a fighting member of the Teen Titans. The next time the Joker’s path crossed with him, Joker hardly thought he was as adorable and cuddly as he had been before. In fact, he was punching Joker in the face which was hardly any way to treat your elders, Joker thought.

“Where are the bombs you rigged, Joker?! Where are they?!” He demanded- all gruff and butch and deep voiced and adult-y, Joker appraised. He even had a whole team of other little super friends now- some girls and a fast one and one of the Robins (of which there seemed to be an endless supply).

Joker just laughed with blood in his mouth. “Ohh~ They grow up so fast! I remember bouncing you on my knee, young man!”

Superboy’s face screwed up in confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” He shouted and threw in another punch for good measure.

Joker spit blood and saliva onto the ground next to him. “You’re going through a rebellious phase, I see.”

Behind them, one of Joker’s bombs went off in a satisfying red cloud of smoke and noise and it distracted Superboy, making him drop the clown and giving him the opening to make a thrilling escape. But not before shouting over his shoulder “The teens these days have no respect for the ones who raised them anymore! So sad!”

\- - -

The Alexander Luthor of Earth 3 had made many fatal errors in wronging Lex and the Joker. He’d underestimated their world, their heroes, insulted Lex’s intelligence, excluded the Joker and incurred his wrath… That they would take revenge upon him was always unavoidable. But those things were all petty misdemeanors when faced with Alexander’s worst crime. Conner Kent was dead. And now, so was the person responsible for his death, face half dissolved in Joker’s acid, lying in the sewage water of an alleyway, gunshot wound in his chest.

Joker had said he wanted to be the one to do it. Lex had conceded. He was glad Joker had scarred his face with the acid first. He didn’t want Alexander to resemble himself at all, not even in death. It was an undignified end. Fitting.

Lex and Joker stood in the alley under the rain, staring down at the imposter Luthor’s body. Staring at the man who’d murdered Lex’s son.

It was one of the rare occasions where there was not even a hint of a smile to be seen on the Joker’s face, his mouth turned down and his eyes surprisingly lucid, surprisingly sorrowful.

“Feel any better?” Joker asked.

“No.” Lex said quietly.

“Me neither.”

After a few moments of solemn quiet, Joker put his hand to Lex’s wrist, wrapping his fingers around it and leaned his head on Lex’s shoulder.

\- - -

End.


End file.
